I have heard of college administrators finding evidence, such as self posted FaceBook pictures, of students drinking/smoking/smoking/stealing/etc. on campus (or elsewhere) and using those as evidence of transgression that can lead to disciplinary actions. There is a whole new public culture in those under about 25, and it creeps older.

The reason that a producer can't sell or even consume a raw food product on their own property, if prohibited by federal law, is because they are engaging in interstate commerce.

The police state accusation IMO is not of the police tasked with enforcement, but a tyranny of the majority - tyranny of the do-gooders, enabled by some bizarre court rulings over the years where government over time seems to no longer have meaningful limits.

That's great JDN, but then you can look forward to a private company to do that for you as I have no wish to have some ill funded government program wasting my tax dollars teling me what I should and shouldn't do for myself. I say this with the utmost respect.

That's great JDN, but then you can look forward to a private company to do that for you as I have no wish to have some ill funded government program wasting my tax dollars teling me what I should and shouldn't do for myself. I say this with the utmost respect.

I do look forward to a private company doing that for me, but unfortunately they don't always do the "right" thing. I also believe in the goodness of the average man, but there are exceptions; that is why we have Police.

I don't think it's a waste of taxpayer's money to regulate health laws, pharmaceutical products, etc. I buy American drugs knowing that they are "safe" or at least have passed a rigorous test. I shop at Whole Foods knowing that their products are regulated and checked, therefore I won't get sick from faulty chicken improperly stored, etc. I think Doctors should be licensed. Etc.

However, I will acknowledge too much regulation is well, too much. It's a fine line.

Then again, if you want the inside scoop on how the 9/11 conspiracy went down, the FEMA camps we'll soon be housed in or how the internationalists will soon wipe out 95% of humanity, then it's a good site.

A yearlong sting operation involving a multitude of state and federal agencies brought to justice Wednesday a dangerous ring of raw dairy enthusiasts in California.

Los Angeles police yesterday arrested a farmer, one of her employers and the owner of a raw foods store on criminal conspiracy charges stemming from their allegedly illegal production and sale of unpasteurized milk, cheese and other nefarious dairy products.

Sharon Palmer, 51, James Cecil Stewart, 64, and Eugenie Victoria Bloch, 58, were all charged in a thirteen-count complaint, which includes “the felony crime of processing milk without pasteurization” and four counts of conspiracy. Arraignments were scheduled for today.

Stewart is the owner of Rawesome Foods, a private buying club that offers customers raw milk and cheese, in addition to other products. State agents raided his store yesterday and seized or destroyed his entire inventory.

“In total, it looks like they took $30,000 to $50,000 worth of food,” said one Rawesome member in a video interview. “They backed up a twenty foot truck with a flatbed, and they filled it up with food. It was full when they left here, and you could see watermelons, coconuts, fresh produce that James had just bought this morning. They took it away. That truck was full. And when we came back in, they had double padlocked all the locks, and everything was bare.”

The Food and Drug Administration contends raw milk can carry harmful bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria. It’s lawful to manufacture and sell unpasteurized dairy products in California, but certain licenses and permits are required. Stewart and Palmer, the owner of Healthy Family Farms, allegedly didn’t have those permits.

According to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, law enforcement agencies launched a yearlong sting operation when they caught wind of Stewart’s and Palmer’s illicit cheese.

**So, if you can use police powers to shut down raw milk distributors, can you use police powers to shut down venues that facilitate homosexual sex? I'm guessing the illness and death rate from consuming raw milk is much lower than the illness and death rate from HIV transmission in LA county.

GM: You would have been one hellacious law school professor when it came to devising questions for exams!

I didn't go to law school, but the answer is simple; one is legal on is not.

Stupdid...

Ok, so laws are passed against homosexual male sex under health codes. We have taxes on gerbil sales from West Hollywood pet stores similar to taxes on tobacco. We have PSAs on the dangers of homosexual sex "Fisting, be smart, don't start". After the school presentations showing diseased lungs from smoking, they have presentations on prolapsed rectums and ugly, graphic pictures of late stage AIDS victims.

We can distribute buttons or stickers with slogans like "Sodomy kills". As liberals like to say "If it saves just one life....."

After all, if the general public has to pay for health care, then we get to have a say in the individual behaviors that contribute to health care costs.

Section 1.3 "Personal Relationships":Sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity should have no impact on the government's treatment of individuals, such as in current marriage, child custody, adoption, immigration or military service laws. Government does not have the authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships. Consenting adults should be free to choose their own sexual practices and personal relationships."Section 3.5 "Rights and Discrimination"We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant. Government should not deny or abridge any individual's rights based on sex, wealth, race, color, creed, age, national origin, personal habits, political preference or sexual orientation. Parents, or other guardians, have the right to raise their children according to their own standards and beliefs.

"I didn't go to law school, but the answer is simple; one is legal on is not."

The point of libertarian issues is to dare to question what should or should not be law, not just blind support fro whatever they are.

When you expand the public role in maintaining our health, you cause the erosion of the liberty to do things considered risky. Motorcycling, stickfighting and putting penises where they weren't designed to go. Is driving a car today without a seatbelt more dangerous than riding a motorcycle? One is legal, one is not (in 49 states). That can change.

Can't have it both ways. If you are the risk manager of you, then you decide. If the Sec. of Heath is in charge, then she decides. You might not like the next czar's decisions.

However, I do agree that if heath issues are brought to the forefront so everyone is aware of the implications and if there is truth in packaging and advertising, I see no reason to make laws prohibiting raw milk, fast food, salt, or tobacco use. Or seat belts, or helmets, etc.

Due to my bike accident, I'm not feeling well, therefore I am not in a good mood this week. A woman walked by my table at an outdoor coffee shop yesterday afternoon. She aggressively asked me, "Do you know that smoking is bad for your health"? I looked up, and loudly said, "No, but I do know being fat and ugly like you (she was) is bad for your health and my eyes."

Frankly, I know smoking cigars is not good for me. And probably, the woman knows being fat is not good for her. But I think it's better if the government stays out of it.

But they can only do that if it is your responsibility, meaning all the consequences of your actions.

Some nanny state laws are good in their effect and result, like seat belts, but then how do we stop there and not end the other things mentioned. I forget my seat belt sometimes and find myself reaching for it every time I see law enforcement. I rode with my youthful 87 year old dad driving the other day. Just a short drive but I got in and buckled up. He saw that and stopped to do his. One sibling of mine has been harping on him to do that. Hard to change old habits and the law gives people an excuse to say - just do it, but that is in the context that everything relating to driving is regulated. Everything related to living is not regulated or at least shouldn't be.

Our state was first I think to enact smoking bans, with a mixed effect on liberty. Then we repealed the helmet law. A gain I suppose for liberty, but I can't imagine getting on a motorcycle without a helmet so it seems like a lousy symbol for liberty. Still they require eye protection and I'm sure we have both been hit with bugs in the glasses enough to know why.

True libertarianism would oppose all these restrictions and true liberalism of today (fascism) would put an end to nearly all personal choice and responsibility. It seems to me we could have a very few, very carefully considered laws and restrictions without going hogwild but experience seems to prove that I am wrong.

One of the justifications of taxes and restrictions on tobacco use is the health care costs that must be imposed on the public as a whole. The same argument is made about fast food/sugar/salt. If you think obesity/heart disease is expensive, imagine the cost per year for the antiviral drugs to treat HIV infection. Imagine the future costs for the VA (and thus the taxpayers) now that openly homosexual males can join the military. A group of less than 1% to at most 3% of the population is about 61% of the HIV + cases now in the US.

If I'm paying, I have a say in your behavior, right?

Or maybe we should pay our own medical bills and then take personal responsibility for our individual choices. Nah, that's crazy talk!

Or maybe we should pay our own medical bills and then take personal responsibility for our individual choices.

And if we paid our own medical bills, the cost levels set by providers would be limited to what people could generally afford and were willing to pay (imagine that!), not what an entity with the power to print money could possibly spend.

Or maybe we should pay our own medical bills and then take personal responsibility for our individual choices.

And if we paid our own medical bills, the cost levels set by providers would be limited to what people could generally afford and were willing to pay (imagine that!), not what an entity with the power to print money could possibly spend.

While I understand your point; I choose to smoke cigars and ride motorcycles, someone else may choose to eat too much fatty food, etc. still there is not a 100% direct cause and effect. In many/most health issues a direct cause and effect cannot be found.

Also, many/most people would not be able to pay their own bills. Do you know what cancer costs? Or a heart attack? Even just a "routine" visit to the emergency room is $1000's of dollars, Etc.

Nor do I think doctors would lower their wages; medical care is not an option or luxury like my cigars and Ducati. I can, I'ld be sad do without. I cannot do without medical care. But doctors are business people too. Why should they treat someone for cancer if they cannot pay? Or even a broken leg. Many/most doctors would focus on high income areas; few if any would want to work in low income or even middle income areas.

My grandfather was a small town surgeon near Milwaukee, albeit he was quite famous in WI. If you were rich, my grandfather charged you top dollar, if you were poor my grandfather would take vegetables or whatever as payment. He never turned anyone away. I don't remember a holiday meal in which he didn't have to leave for an emergency somewhere. For various reasons, good and bad, those days are gone.

JDN, I will try to split my answer, libertarian issue here and the rest over on health care politics.

GM put it succinctly (as he does), "If I'm paying, I have a say in your behavior".

I don't care if you don't care (but you are certainly entitled to that opinion) that you might lose your freedom or preferred recreation because I care about mine and I know plenty here care about the right to fight which would most certainly be among the first to go.

If you can ride Dukatis for recreation, not exactly third world poverty behavior, you certainly should not need someone else to be picking up your basic living expenses, healthcare, so you you don't have to dip into your own resources.

No intent to hit while you are down, but theoretically your choice of riding superbikes at higher speeds on mountain roads, in a nanny state system, jeopardizes my right to putz around carefully at 80 mpg on my Honda 200. Soon they will all be prohibited. Or they will limit you to what mine is and that is a different sport, likely of no interest to a Dukati enthusiast. You are perhaps willing to lose what you have. I am not.

Your right to your pursuit without harming others and my right to not pay for it are both clearly enumerated in the 9th amendment IMO.

"I choose to smoke cigars and ride motorcycles, someone else may choose to eat too much fatty food, etc. still there is not a 100% direct cause and effect. In many/most health issues a direct cause and effect cannot be found."

Government prohibitions and regulations and penalties have been issued with far less certain causation than those examples.

Let's take one of my summer favorites, waterskiing, passed down in our family through at least 4 generations. I remember my grandfather skied on one ski on his 70th birthday and my mother into her 80s, while my award winning daughter just got her first successful one-ski ride at 17, last weekend. Others pull hamstrings and fill up chiropractic wards with their pulls and twists. It burns fossil fuels. Why is that necessary - in some Washington bureaucratic view - it isn't! Banned. Dessert - banned. How would you like your shrimp cooked, battered with french fries, just kidding, we'll tell you how your food will be prepared. Whoops, shrimp was banned too. It just isn't necessary. Even lean beef is inefficient and oatmeal is on the latest list of foods to not advertise to children. There is no end when the alleged consequence is a public expense.

"My grandfather was a small town surgeon near Milwaukee, albeit he was quite famous in WI. If you were rich, my grandfather charged you top dollar, if you were poor my grandfather would take vegetables or whatever as payment. He never turned anyone away."

My grandfather and father were dentists serving the downtown community including some of its most famous citizens like our current govenor in his childhood, charged low, fair rates that no one ever questioned, worked long weeks and long hours well into their 80s because they loved what they did and serving people and did not charge people extra or give better service for being rich. Good grief.

Doug, perhaps I am wrong, but I think we are saying the same way, but just differently.

I don't like government interference either; that said, we do need laws against murder, rape, etc. Also against untested drugs, food storage, safety building codes, etc.

I guess my point is if it primarily only is going to affect me, stay out of it, but but if my actions directly affect others then there is an issue. Who cares if I get drunk tonight (it helps the pain go away) but I shouldn't drive (there should be and is a law) since I might kill someone else. Also, I want truth in packaging and advertising. Don't tell me lies. But after I know the truth, if I still want to eat fat food, smoke, drink, not wear a seatbelt or helmet or whatever, I agree, that should be my choice. Do you see my point?

By the way I have/had (totaled) a Ducati GT 1000. An old man's Ducati, not a true sports bike, that said, it is still 1000cc and quite fast and I've had it modified. Maybe now I'll buy a Honda like yours.

I never said I was 3rd world poverty. Nor are you. Then again, back to the subject, I could never afford to pay for cancer or a heart attack out of my own pocket.

That is why your father and grandfather's occupation is different than my grandfather's. Dental in this discussion is apples and oranges to Medical issues. Insurance is suppose to be for that which is unexpected and cataclysmic. I don't count a cleaning, a cavity, or even a root canal in that category so I've never bought dental insurance. People can either afford the cost, shop around and find a lower cost provider, or simply go without for a while. But I do buy/need medical insurance since I could be hit by a car, come down with cancer, have a heart attack, etc. and I could never afford the cost, nor do I have time to shop for a low cost provider. Plus coverage may be needed immediately. Insurance, therefore somehow needs to be available and affordable. The same applies to car insurance; I may not need to buy casualty insurance (damage to my car) but I always buy liability insurance to insure against the unknown.

As for my grandfather, I know a few big time lawyers here in town who do the same. For rich clients, they charge rich prices. For the downtrodden they will discount their fees and sometimes they do pro bono. I see nothing wrong with that. Frankly, I admire them. As I did my grandfather. However now a days medical insurance reimbursement rate is controlled by the insurance companies; it's not the government (except Medicare), but I'm not sure that is right either. Imagine if all lawyers were paid the same rate regardless of education, experience, or ability? It's not an easy question nor is there an easy answer.

I warned that legalization will lead to greater regulation and taxation, and not remove the money and black markets of drugs as promised.

This LA Times is about environmental aspects, and starts the ball rolling on regulation first and taxation sure to follow: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pot-enviro-20121223,0,1182034,full.story

Wildlife technician Aaron Pole surveys a forest trashed by growers. Carbofuran, an insecticide lethal to humans in small doses, is found regularly at large-scale pot farms. Also flowing into the watershed are rodenticides, fungicides, diesel fuel and other pollutants-----------Libertarians should have worked toward reversing Wickard v. Filburn before thinking legalization is possible. (Growing wheat on your own property that is consumed on your own property is an act of interstate commerce.) Also Kelo where they can just take your property for other private purposes.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (CBS4) – A drug testing company says it’s seeing a big spike in children using marijuana following the passage of Amendment 64.

...It’s not just more students, but it appears they’re using pot more often. ... “In high school it has kind of gotten out of hand,” student Alaina Tanenbaum said.

Experts say the test results show that children are getting higher than ever with alarming levels of THC, marijuana’s active ingredient, in their bodies. “A typical kid (is) between 50 and 100 nanograms. Now were seeing these up in the over 500, 700, 800, climbing,” (More at link)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (CBS4) – A drug testing company says it’s seeing a big spike in children using marijuana following the passage of Amendment 64.

...It’s not just more students, but it appears they’re using pot more often. ... “In high school it has kind of gotten out of hand,” student Alaina Tanenbaum said.

Experts say the test results show that children are getting higher than ever with alarming levels of THC, marijuana’s active ingredient, in their bodies. “A typical kid (is) between 50 and 100 nanograms. Now were seeing these up in the over 500, 700, 800, climbing,” (More at link)

This certainly bear watching; while not denying the possibility that GM is implying here, is there also a possibility of more testing leading to skewed results or a motive by the company to skew the data?

This certainly bear watching; while not denying the possibility that GM is implying here, is there also a possibility of more testing leading to skewed results or a motive by the company to skew the data?

I'm sure there will be lots of followup research on this. I expect the same result.

We know about the programs, taxes and regulations here in the US that are overly burdensome. Then we hear of stories from third world countries where regulations are even worse, much worse. Only the richest people with the deepest pockets and highest connections can jump through the hoops that empower the powerful and hold down the masses.

While we argue the age old question of whether you help people best by giving them a fish or by teaching them to fish, one observer pointed out that what we really are doing with our policies is denying them access to the pond.

Economic liberty is your access to the pond. You shouldn't be taxed and regulated like a mulit-national conglomerate with teams of extra employees dedicated to compliance before you have found your first customer or earned your first dollar.

The default position ought to be that a person who is infringing on no one else ought to have a right to make a living.

One comprehensive set of measurements applied across the globe over time is the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom (already posted in other threads): http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking What we know is that with each country's policies they are choosing between being rich and poor. If the choice is between being free and prosperous versus forcing people to either stay in poverty or be held back from improving their lives, aren't we really choosing between right and wrong?

DENVER – Colorado doctors say looser pot laws are leading to more child poisonings for youngsters who are often attracted by drug-laced edibles such as gummy worms or brownies.

From early 2005 to late 2009, Children’s Hospital Colorado had no emergency-room visits by kids who had ingested marijuana. In the next two years, after medical marijuana became legal in Colorado, it had 14 cases. So far, no deaths have been reported.

Doctors are campaigning for mandatory safety packaging as Colorado lawmakers debate even broader legal sales of pot with recreational-marijuana stores.

“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in pediatric exposure,” said Dr. George Wang, a Children’s ER doctor who also works with Denver Health’s Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center.

Dr. Michael Kosnett said careful parenting is also part of the equation.

Children ingesting pot is also dangerous because emergency-room doctors aren’t usually looking for it as a cause of any symptoms they see, Wang said. That can lead to invasive and expensive diagnostic efforts, such as a spinal tap or CT scan, if parents are embarrassed or scared to mention the true cause.

“When children get admitted to the ICU, that’s serious,” Kosnett said. Symptoms may appear similar to meningitis, for example.

At Children’s Hospital Colorado, doctors reported serious symptoms, including decreased levels of consciousness and breathing trouble. Children can also vomit from ingesting too much of it.

Some industry members favor tamper-proof seals, but they would rather not break each individual joint or candy into a lockable bag that cost $7 or more.

Robin Hackett, co-owner of Botana Care, a medical-marijuana store in Northglenn, said that would drive up the cost.

The Denver Post reported calls about potential marijuana exposure for all ages have doubled since 2009 at one poison center.

Prescribed dosages of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana products used to control nausea from chemotherapy, is between 4 and 12 milligrams for most children ages 2 to 4, while some edibles have up to 300 milligrams of the active ingredient in marijuana.

There is no statewide reporting. Some doctors have gone through files to try to determine the impact, while others do not track those cases.

Making it legal, making it acceptable and making it accessible for adults somehow leads to children stoned before their brain fully develops.

I studied the situation on my trips to the state this winter. The 'medical' side only is what is up and running. No new legal licensed shops for the public have opened yet. All pot sales to the public so far are coming from medical license abuse or just through the usual crime channels. Everyone that wanted a medical license got one if they stuck to basic points like chronic pain in their 'doctor' interview. What a licensee can buy is virtually unlimited and the active ingredient level in your blood is something users can dial up like a volume switch, not limited by old fashioned things like coughing or lung capacity. Low prices serve to make it more available and more available means more children using.

Next it will get much worse in terms of THC levels in the children as new production comes on line, new stores, new advertising, pot tourism, adds to the new enthusiasm gone viral, and the futility of parent warnings or prohibitions.

Then it will get worse in different ways as our 'concerned' 'regulatory' authorities get ramped up to handle all the new business. New taxes will replace what was lost in pricing, 'legal' product will get co-mingled with smuggled, organized crime based product, tax laws will replace drug laws as the new enforcement mechanism, and the powers of the all powerful state will grow and benefit from this ill-fated movement toward liberty. MHO.-----

New Colo House bill passed: drivers are too high if their blood contains more than 5 nanograms of THC per milliliter http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/02/colorado-house-approves-bill-to-set-pot-limits-for-drivers/#ixzz2PVbWbYnA ('Open containers' are already illegal.)

Denver Post, 30 pot legalization questions with answers: http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22184944/colorado-pot-legalization-30-questions-and-answers"About the only place it is 100 percent clear you can smoke marijuana is in a free-standing home that you own.""The amendment allows people to grow up to six plants — only three of which can be flowering, or ready for harvest, at any given time." Selling what you grow (or procure any other way) if you aren't a legal shop (and there aren't any) is still illegal.-----

It will be interesting to see how this all plays in the 2016 Presidential nomination fight between Hillary and Gov. Hickenlooper.

Well, off the top of my head, certainly food/candy containing pot should be sold in a manner that no one, including children, can be confused about what it is. Legal standards similar to those about firearms being kept inaccessible to children seem to be a real good idea.

Well, off the top of my head, certainly food/candy containing pot should be sold in a manner that no one, including children, can be confused about what it is. Legal standards similar to those about firearms being kept inaccessible to children seem to be a real good idea.

Yes. They already have that. Both the gun and the bong (now all vaporizers) are hard to use in the lockbox. Legalization only extends to persons 21 and over, no shops have opened, and yet child poisoning incidences and child THC blood levels are increasing.

"Wittes is a smart guy who surrounds himself with other smart people." - BD on the privacy thread

A previous piece by Wittes:

What Ben Franklin Really Said

By Benjamin WittesFriday, July 15, 2011

Here’s an interesting historical fact I have dug up in some research for an essay I am writing about the relationship between liberty and security: That famous quote by Benjamin Franklin that “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” does not mean what it seems to say. Not at all.

I started looking into this quotation because I am writing a frontal attack on the idea that liberty and security exist in some kind of “balance” with one another–and the quotation is kind of iconic to the balance thesis. Indeed, Franklin’s are perhaps the most famous words ever written about the relationship. A version of them is engraved on the Statue of Liberty. They are quoted endlessly by those who assert that these two values coexist with one another in a precarious, ever-shifting state of balance that security concerns threaten ever to upset. Every student of American history knows them. And every lover of liberty has heard them and known that they speak to that great truth about the constitution of civilized government–that we empower governments to protect us in a devil’s bargain from which we will lose in the long run.

Very few people who quote these words, however, have any idea where they come from or what Franklin was really saying when he wrote them. That’s not altogether surprising, since they are far more often quoted than explained, and the context in which they arose was a political battle of limited resonance to modern readers. Many of Franklin’s biographers don’t quote them at all, and no text I have found attempts seriously to explain them in context. The result is to get to the bottom of what they meant to Franklin, one has to dig into sources from the 1750s, with the secondary biographical literature giving only a framework guide to the dispute. I’m still nailing down the details, but I can say with certainty at this stage that Franklin was not saying anything like what we quote his words to suggest.

The words appear originally in a 1755 letter that Franklin is presumed to have written on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly to the colonial governor during the French and Indian War. The letter was a salvo in a power struggle between the governor and the Assembly over funding for security on the frontier, one in which the Assembly wished to tax the lands of the Penn family, which ruled Pennsylvania from afar, to raise money for defense against French and Indian attacks. The governor kept vetoing the Assembly’s efforts at the behest of the family, which had appointed him. So to start matters, Franklin was writing not as a subject being asked to cede his liberty to government, but in his capacity as a legislator being asked to renounce his power to tax lands notionally under his jurisdiction. In other words, the “essential liberty” to which Franklin referred was thus not what we would think of today as civil liberties but, rather, the right of self-governance of a legislature in the interests of collective security.

What’s more the “purchase [of] a little temporary safety” of which Franklin complains was not the ceding of power to a government Leviathan in exchange for some promise of protection from external threat; for in Franklin’s letter, the word “purchase” does not appear to have been a metaphor. The governor was accusing the Assembly of stalling on appropriating money for frontier defense by insisting on including the Penn lands in its taxes–and thus triggering his intervention. And the Penn family later offered cash to fund defense of the frontier–as long as the Assembly would acknowledge that it lacked the power to tax the family’s lands. Franklin was thus complaining of the choice facing the legislature between being able to make funds available for frontier defense and maintaining its right of self-governance–and he was criticizing the governor for suggesting it should be willing to give up the latter to ensure the former.

In short, Franklin was not describing some tension between government power and individual liberty. He was describing, rather, effective self-government in the service of security as the very liberty it would be contemptible to trade. Notwithstanding the way the quotation has come down to us, Franklin saw the liberty and security interests of Pennsylvanians as aligned.

Coloradans also approved a 25% tax on the marijuana sales they legalized in 2012. The money is earmarked for education, so now parents can tell their kids they're getting high for their future, or something. The problem is that the tax rate, which can reach 35% in some localities, will be so high that it may encourage a black market, thus defeating the supposed purpose of legalization. This is what comes from toking up before economics class.

Time to legalize pot, prostitution in NJ. Legalize them and tax them and keep the business and government tax base here. Screw NY. We have been getting screwed by NY ever since I can remember:

( I say this with tongue in cheek. I guess the prostitution money could go to health school lunch programs, and pot could go to pay for the half of the population that gets it "free". Maybe free mammograms or something and that would also double to secure the chick vote.)

*****Why New York casinos could crush Atlantic City

Richard Cummins | Lonely Planet Images | Getty Images New Yorkers have approved an amendment that will allow seven casinos to open in the state, including one to three in the New York City area in seven years. And that could sound the death knell for Atlantic City, already struggling under the weight of regional competition.

Atlantic City should be "very concerned," said Chad Mollman, an analyst who covers casino and hotel stocks for Morningstar. "New York City is the biggest feeder market in Atlantic City. There is a question in terms of the viability of Atlantic City in the long term."

Resorts was the first legal casino on the East Coast when it opened in Atlantic City in 1978. A lot has changed since then.

"Atlantic City's time has come and gone," said Harold Vogel, the CEO of Vogel Capital Management and the author of the bedrock textbook "Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis." "It was second after Nevada, and it was a special place in a small location. It had 10 good years when it was pretty unique, but then we got Indian casinos, and then gambling in Pennsylvania."

(Read more: Stronger than the storm? Maybe not Atlantic City)

Part of the rationale for opening casinos in New York has been that it will capture gambling money that has been going to Atlantic City and other places.

The New York Daily News reported that Gov. Andrew Cuomo made the case for the casino amendment by telling the press, "New Jersey has casinos. Connecticut has casinos. Pennsylvania has casinos. We literally hemorrhage people from the borders who go to casinos. I think it will keep the money in this state and I think it is a major economic development vehicle for the Hudson Valley especially and for upstate New York."

If New York money stops crossing the southern border, Atlantic City is in big trouble.

Richard "Skip" Bronson, the chairman of U.S. Digital Gaming and the author of "The War at the Shore," which chronicled his effort to build a luxury Mirage Resorts casino in Atlantic City, said New York casinos will make a bad situation even worse.

"There are only so many gambling dollars in the pot," Bronson said. "And there has been a massive proliferation of casinos throughout America. It's a form of real estate, and like any form of real estate, it goes through a cycle: Demand, saturation, and then glut. A place like Atlantic City has too many casino hotels and too many rooms. This is a fact of life." Play VideoRoll the dice on a casino?Is now the time to be on casino stocks? With CNBC's Melissa Lee and the "Options Action" traders.If Atlantic City does slip into further decline, Caesars Entertainment could be deeply affected. The company owns four casinos there (Bally's Atlantic City, Caesars Atlantic City, Harrah's Atlantic City and Showboat Atlantic City), which have been a serious drag on earnings. The company lost $761 million in the third quarter, largely because of a massive write-down of Atlantic City assets.

"We continue to have a negative outlook for casino companies in the U.S. due to what we're seeing in regional casino markets, and Caesars is the most exposed to regional casino markets," Mollman said. He rates Caesars shares sell, and estimates their fair value (similar to a price target) at $9.

Yet, despite the fact that New York casinos are likely to hasten the demise of Atlantic City, Caesars donated $100,00 to the New York Jobs Now Committee, which supported the pro-casino amendment.

Caesars did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Read more: Science says casinos could make Wall Street riskier)

Of course, ignoring potential New York City casinos might be impossible.

"There isn't a gaming company in America that isn't paying attention to New York, and there's not a gaming company in America that's not interested in having an opportunity in New York," Bronson said.

New York casinos could still face an uncertain future because of the extent of regional competition.

"In an oversaturated market, now there's a much higher risk for people who will have to build up these casino palaces, and it's not clear that they'll be at all successful," Vogel told CNBC.com. "This is how markets fall apart, and this is how you have bankruptcies." —By CNBC's Alex Rosenberg. Follow him on Twitter @CNBCAlex.****

My intuitive sense of things is that this level of taxation still does not approach the costs attendant to a criminal market.

Agree. They will do fine for now with this level of taxation, only paid by tourists and casual users. 'Medical marijuana' market will not be subject to this tax. The heavy burners just had to utter 'chronic pain' to a doctor, and their friends all know to just call them to get around the tax.

I'm mostly pointing out legalization is a misnomer. The black market is still illegal. Levying a 35% tax that most people can easily avoid will result in a permanent and prosperous 'black market'.

One libertarian point in favor of legalization was that crime would disappear with the big money and illegal status removed, but then we tax it to get the price back up to old, black market prices. I see an incongruity.